Thursday, March 20, 2014

Kith

Jay Griffiths soared away on a seven-year pilgrimage to
forage for the knowledge that illuminated her book Wild.She spent a lot of time with wild tribes, and
with conquered people who still had beautiful memories of wildness and
freedom.As she bounced from place to
place, both modern and indigenous, she became aware of a glaring difference
between wild people and the dominant culture — their children.

This presented her with a perplexing riddle.“Why are so many children in Euro-American
cultures unhappy?Why is it that
children in many traditional cultures seem happier, fluent in their
child-nature?”Her dance with this
riddle gave birth to her book, Kith.

Griffiths is English, and the book’s title refers to the old
phrase, “kith and kin.”Kin means close
family.Kith originally meant knowledge
or native land, the home outside the house.When peasants lived on the land, their knowledge was rooted in the
living place around them, not in mysterious juju like mathematics, economics,
or engineering.In recent centuries,
most peasants have been driven out of their home, and their traditional knowledge
has been forgotten.Today, the meaning
of kith has been reduced to extended family and neighbors.

Like “sustainable,” kith was once a beautiful word of great
importance, now reduced to a toothless ghost.Both words are lifesavers, if we could just remember them.They are not forever lost.Griffiths reminds us that “the past is not
behind us, but within us.”

In this book, kith is used in its ancient form, a sacred word
of power.Why are kids so unhappy?They have no kith.They are dreadfully impoverished.In our society, kids (and adults) are unwell
because they have largely been exiled from nature.They live indoors in manmade
environments.Nature is an essential
nutrient for health and sanity.Kith is
life.

Griffiths and her brothers spent much of their youth playing
outdoors, wandering across the land, getting wet and dirty, without adult
supervision.They rarely watched
television.She fears that her
generation may be the last to experience the remaining vestiges of a normal
childhood. But I think that the game
will change radically after the lights go out.Mass insanity may not be our closing act.After the plague comes healing.

Evolution prepared our species for a life of hunting and
foraging.All infants born today are
wild animals fine-tuned for thriving outdoors in a tropical climate, surrounded
by wild flora and fauna.Being
surrounded by nature is what all animals require for a normal and healthy
life.Like all other animals, young
humans need to explore, play, learn.Children
need nature like fish need water.They
need a place where they belong, a home, a land that will be “mentor, teacher,
and parent.”

They need to grow up in lands that still have their original
parts — deer, birds, snakes, frogs, coyotes — our relatives who have not
forgotten how to live.They have so much
to teach us.Pets are unacceptable
replacements for our wild and free relatives.Cities are unacceptable substitutes for healthy places to live.Zoo animals have miserable lives.Confinement in industrial civilization is
devastating for tropical primates of all ages.

Several centuries back, Griffiths’ ancestors lived in
villages near commons.The commons were
open lands where the people could hunt, fish, pick berries, gather wood, and
graze livestock.Today, the commons are
nearly extinct.They have been
eliminated by a process called enclosure, whereby wealthy lords fenced off the
commons, replaced forests with sheep pastures, evicted most peasants, and
burned down their humble cottages.

Enclosure is the diabolical anti-kith.Modern kids no longer have abundant open
spaces in which they can mature in a healthy manner.Space has been enclosed and denatured.So has freedom, the essence of
childhood.They are no longer free to
spend their days wandering where whimsy leads them.Modern childhood is now rigidly scheduled.

Community has also been enclosed.Kids used to be raised in villages where
there were no strangers.Kids were
mentored and parented by neighbors and extended family.Modern kids grow up in a world of
automobiles, strangers, and nuclear families.Outdoors, behind every bush, are tweakers, psychopaths, perverts, and
predators.Kids spend much of their
lives under house arrest.

Kids have immense interest in learning, but we give them “a
school system that is half factory, half prison, and too easily ignores the
very education which children crave.”They major in obedience, punctuality, self-centeredness, and the myths
of civilization.They spend their
childhood years indoors, in classrooms, and graduate knowing nearly nothing
about the ecosystem they inhabit, their kith.

This is quite different from how children in traditional
societies are raised.Wild children are
in constant human contact until they learn to walk, some sleep with their
parents for the first five years or so.They are never left alone to cry themselves to sleep.They are never scolded, beaten, or given
commands.They are socialized,
respected, treated like adults.Socialization teaches them to be respectful of others, and nurture good
relationships.They develop confidence
and self-reliance.

Importantly, wild cultures do an excellent job of guiding youths
through a healthy transition into adults.Every person is born with a unique personality.We all have different gifts, interests, and
destinies — trackers, herbalists, counselors, scouts, singers, dancers,
drummers, shamans, storytellers, healers, slackers, morons, lunatics.

Elders carefully help youths find their paths in life.“Every child needs their time in the woods, to
find their vision or their dream.Yet
most children today have no such rite, no way of negotiating that difficult
transition into adulthood.”

The first generation of enclosure victims were painfully
aware of all they had lost.Their city
born descendants have little or no awareness of the lost treasure of kith, and
the harsh poverty of their consumer prosperity.They are “denied their role as part of the wildlife.”Many may go to their graves without ever
experiencing the beauty that is the sacred birthright of tropical primates, and
every other living thing.

Griffiths learned to talk and read at a very early age.She has a great passion for words and
learning.You get the impression that
she has read 10 or 20 books a week since she was crawling around in
nappies.She writes with flourish and
flamboyance.Kith is not an instruction manual for
childrearing, but it provides a wealth of important insights for tropical
primates who live in modern society.It’s an excellent companion to Jean Liedloff’s masterpiece, The
Continuum Concept.

NOTE: The U.K. edition of Kith is now in print.Australians can get the Kindle version
only.The U.S. edition will be published
by Counterpoint Press, and released by the end of 2014, they say.Non-Europeans can buy the British edition
from Amazon via third party vendors.Amazon
U.K. is forbidden to sell the Kindle version to Yanks (they’re still sore about
the Revolutionary War).

Based on the blog's analysis, I'd say TV's "The Walton's" family had kith; they lived in a multigenerational rural environment in which they produced products (lumber) in a 'hands on' way and with a deep respect for nature.